PARAGON comic

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Or don't send that guy one, he seems to be the only reviewer with a problem about it.

Richard at the FPB was spectacularly critical of Van Dom's Vanguard something similarly "if the next part is half a year away I can't be bothered" - and I wonder if he thinks we get paid? I remember coming away from the review feeling quite crestfallen like "...but I did this... in my spare time, for fun and this is THE BIGGEST WEBSITE I've ever been featured on and it's really bad press for me". Why did I deserve that? I did that over like, two months for a laugh! Someone commented at the time "wow, this guy really doesn't get small press".

I'm glad he wrote a critical review, it shows he paid attention (although he did think Mammoth Jack was a horse) - I'm glad he even wrote a review at all he could've ignored the comp copy. But he has to ask himself - is he actually HELPING the small press comics he's reviewing like this? I mean, will this review encourage people to buy Paragon or Vanguard? How MANY people read the FPB?! I think - I do really appreciate critical reviews - but when this is the most read one the most searchable one (type Dirk van Dom Vanguard into Google)...it's just harmful to be such a dick about it.

I mean....we're doing this whole thing for fun right?

Also he refused to review Dr WTF. Which can only be a good thing.

[Davek]

Paragon guys, I totally respect your efforts but I had similar thoughts to the FP blog review of the recent issue when reading Issue 6 (I was sent this back issue for free a couple of weeks ag - giveaway competition).  I requested the back issue after enjoying the Jikan web strip - but was disapointed with the comic.  Found it difficult to read and follow in places - there were some nices bits but overall it did not inspire me to buy any more product.

I am not from the small press community so maybe I dont understand the culture/approach in comparison to regular publishers of comics?  Maybe your comic is more for comic creators to read/appreciate?

[Steven Denton]

Or don't send that guy one, he seems to be the only reviewer with a problem about it.

Richard at the FPB was spectacularly critical of Van Dom's Vanguard something similarly "if the next part is half a year away I can't be bothered" - and I wonder if he thinks we get paid? I remember coming away from the review feeling quite crestfallen like "...but I did this... in my spare time, for fun and this is THE BIGGEST WEBSITE I've ever been featured on and it's really bad press for me". Why did I deserve that? I did that over like, two months for a laugh! Someone commented at the time "wow, this guy really doesn't get small press".

I'm glad he wrote a critical review, it shows he paid attention (although he did think Mammoth Jack was a horse) - I'm glad he even wrote a review at all he could've ignored the comp copy. But he has to ask himself - is he actually HELPING the small press comics he's reviewing like this? I mean, will this review encourage people to buy Paragon or Vanguard? How MANY people read the FPB?! I think - I do really appreciate critical reviews - but when this is the most read one the most searchable one (type Dirk van Dom Vanguard into Google)...it's just harmful to be such a dick about it.

I mean....we're doing this whole thing for fun right?

Also he refused to review Dr WTF. Which can only be a good thing.

This is an interesting argument, if you send out a review copy you are probably looking to raise awareness of your comic and hopefully shift a few more issues. You are also submitting your creative baby for review. The reviewer's obligation is simply to give their honest opinion, if they don't then every review they write is worthless. Small press comics like any other comic, book, TV show or film should be reviewed on the content.

[TordelBack]

Small press comics like any other comic, book, TV show or film should be reviewed on the content.

You're right, but I do think reviews could take account of the different environment as regards creators' time and scheduling of books - complaining about there being 6 months between episodes of Icarus Dangerous rather misses the point. 

[mygrimmbrother]

I'm with Stevie Denton block on this I think - being critical of the content is fine and surely what we all want. Obviously, what we really want is for all reviewers to love our stuff, but yeah, failing that, we've got to be able to weather honest criticism. That just goes for the quality of the strips though - as far as the wait between issues, well, that's just not something small press comic creators can really do much about, so I'd forget that bit.

[Steven Denton]

I had a good long think about this and yes the wait between issues of small press comics is inevitable and definitely not worth criticising in the same way you would a comic from say Image with a 6 month gap between issues. But on the other hand if it's detrimental to the reviewer's enjoyment of a story can they really not mention it? I can see the logic for instance in questioning whether a 2000ad style anthology small press magazine could ever work with 6 months between issues. But the place for that in a review, in my opinion, is not as a criticism of an individual story but a comment about the editorial policy.

Some reviews definitely can be mean spirited and sometimes they can dance around the points they are trying to make. When you do get negative points in a review it can be hard to work out what the problem actually is with and if there is anything you can reasonably do about it (if you don't just disagree with it all together)

[Alski]

Although I was trashed, I am able to take the review at face value. It's his honest opinion and we can't ask for much more.

I review albums every week for the internet, an independant mag plus a big ass well known mag. I have slagged off people in my time, but nevertry to hurt anyone's feelings and make sure that the reasons for my criticisms are clear.

You can't like everything. I wonder why he din't want to do Dr WTF - that really is a super little mag.

[Steven Denton]

I used to write reviews for 2000ad review .com (got rest its binary soul) and the very first review I wrote I was pulled up on an assertion I made about a strip by its writer! It was a steep learning curve.

[Van Dom]

Yowch. Tough review. I guess the frequency of publication does hurt it. I do wonder how different the reviews would be if it was on a regular monthly publication schedule. Of course, this is not at all possible, but still, I have no doubt it would make a huge difference to the assessment of each strip. For example, what he says about chapter 3 of my story setting up future chapters. Well, yes, that's true. It's chapter 3 of a finite story, and while the first 2 chapters introduced a lot of mysteries and questions designed to capture a reader's attention, I needed to use this chapter to answer a lot of them so that we can get into the second act of the story without any of that baggage. It's a fairly common story structure I would imagine, and were the installments appearing monthly I don't think it would be an issue. As it is, however, it becomes a huge issue due to the infrequency of publication and has a detrimental effect on the way the story is perceived as a whole.

There's nothing we can do about it though. It takes the creators a lot of time to put these strips together, as it is not their full-time job and is only something they can work on in their spare time. And it takes the editor time to raise the necessary funds to get each issue printed, since it is coming out of his own personal pocket and he is more than likely barely breaking even on each issue. I guess the idea of ongoing stories in small press self-published anthologies is simply a flawed concept. I was advised of this by Richmond Clements when putting together Vanguard. I guess I knew it anyway, but I still wanted to go ahead and do it. Maybe it's being overly ambitious..? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......

[The Legendary Shark]

I hesitate to weigh in on this because my efforts weren't in this issue but I thought I'd share a few thoughts, if you'll indulge me.

To my mind, a reviewer has two main purposes; to inform potential readers and to assist creators. In reviewing professional publications, I think that the reviewer must lean towards the former whilst in the case of amateur publications he or she should lean more towards the latter. When reading reviews of my own work I want to be helped towards an understanding of what I've done that works and what doesn't so that I can improve my craft. The review under discussion here, whilst harsh, does at least point to some of (the reviewer's) percieved problems so that the creators involved can have a think about what they're doing and adjust, or not, accordingly.

I'm quite jealous of that review, actually.

This is because nothing I've written has evinced anything like a similar response. Sure, my work's been mentioned in passing, but to me that feels like a 'meh' response - and 'meh' is no good to me at all. Take, for instance, the strip Flesh: Extinction I wrote for Zarjaz. There are no reviews of that anywhere online that I can find. There's one brief mention in an extremely short piece somewhere but, apart from that, nothing. I found this extremely disappointing and disheartening. It's as if all the work (and love) that Chris Geary, the editorial boys and myself put into this strip counted for nothing. There was nary a ripple on the nerdy-gurdy so I don't know what I'm doing right and, more to the point, what I'm doing wrong. Silence really can be deafening.

Of course, I don't write with reviewers in mind and, shocking though this might be, I don't write with an audience in mind, either. That is to say, I do write to the specific genre or world demanded by Zarjaz or Paragon but beyond that I write primarily for myself. I write the stories that I want to read - because if I want to read them then hopefully others will as well. I think that if I write what I think an audience wants to see I'll inevitably churn out generic dross with no character or voice of its own. Of course, this means that I sometimes write stuff that nobody else wants to read (especially not Quaxxanlets...) but that's okay by me. A rejection or criticism doesn't necessarily mean that my story is bad (although sometimes I have to admit that this is indeed the case) but, more likely, that I haven't done my job properly in telling the story - which is generally just a case of a failure of mechanics rather than imagination. I don't think I can call myself talented until my mechanics are equal to my imagination, if that makes sense!

I have a friend who wants to be a novelist and he's constantly trawling the best seller lists looking for the stories and genres that are popular and then trying to bend his own ideas to fit. As a result, he loses his own voice somewhere along the line and a story that was perfectly good in its own right becomes a mediocre mash-up of other writers' approaches liberally sprinkled with chunks of whatever's in fashion at the moment. I keep asking him if he thinks Tolkein, Orwell or Douglas Adams used this approach but somehow he can't see it that way. "Write what you love," I keep telling him, and "do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail", (I'm full of crap aphorisms like that!) but I think that he's not got enough faith in his own talent to do that. He has a great idea for a fantasy novel, for example, and I read some of the original chapters as he wrote them. Then Harry Potter came on the scene and he trashed it - rewriting the thing as a childrens' book. He doesn't even have children, so what's the point of that? Inevitably, all the imagination and work he put into building his world and characters has been wasted as he chases popularity. It's very sad.

A wise man once told me, "listen to everyone, take what you need and discard the rest" and I think that this is good advice for life in general and also for reading reviews. Take the criticism and fold it in to what you do would be my advice.

Anything is better than 'meh.'

[TordelBack]

Take, for instance, the strip Flesh: Extinction I wrote for Zarjaz.

Didn't realise it was you, but I thought it was great!  Not the most thoughtful of reviews, but there you go.  Loved the cover too.

[The Legendary Shark]

Take, for instance, the strip Flesh: Extinction I wrote for Zarjaz.

Didn't realise it was you, but I thought it was great! 

Woo hoo! Thanks for that, Tordels!

(Uh-oh, did I just completely trash my last post with that outburst??)

[Steven Denton]

I hesitate to weigh in on this because my efforts weren't in this issue but I thought I'd share a few thoughts, if you'll indulge me.


Anything is better than 'meh.'

I agree it is disheartening to see your work seemingly make no impression at all. Pretty much everything I have ever written drawn or coloured has failed to make any kind of impact as far as I can tell (this is in relation to small press comics and in the context of reviews, the internet in general is very positive about my art work). But I have never taken a creative kicking so I'm not sure if that's worse, I would imagine I would find it hard not to take it a little bit personally.

[locustsofdeath!]

But I have never taken a creative kicking so I'm not sure if that's worse, I would imagine I would find it hard not to take it a little bit personally.

This same reviewer once thoroughly and utterly took one of my scripts apart and I felt completely empty inside for days - I even questioned whether or not I should keep writing comics!

I didn't take it personally, and even took a lot from it (that review actually offered constructive criticism) and I think got better because of it. Sometimes he adopts a tone that seems to say "give it up, you've got nothing to offer, you're terrible" that's tough not to take personally...but looking back I do feel it was good that he pointed out what the problem was so I didn't make the same mistake twice.

I requested the back issue after enjoying the Jikan web strip -

I'm glad you liked it! I'm writing another one for Paragon right now; I hope you'll keep reading.

[Cthulouis]

By contrast to Sharky, I hesitate to weigh in because I *was* involved with this issue, but I have been following these reviews for a while now, and so I'll try to make my thoughts more general.

What has always annoyed me most about his reviews is that he seems to believe his opinions are facts. He doesn't like certain strips, therefore apparently the comic is only half good.

But those other strips may well appeal to people who don't like the ones that he does. I don't know if it's just because 2000ad is the only comic I read, but for me, only thinking some of the strips are good and thinking the others are a bit meh, is par for the course for *professional* comics, let alone small press comics.

I understand his problems with reprint. I personally haven't bought the collections, so I enjoy reading those strips in Paragon. If I had already read them, Paragon probably would feel slightly less value for money.

I also understand (though do not share) his frustration over the time between issues. I don't know if timings could be reorganised such that there are bigger chunks of fewer stories in each Paragon. Would that help even if it was possible? If he didn't like the particular stories showcased in such an issue, probably not.

I also greatly appreciate any crit given to a piece of work, so long as it is well written and thoughtfully constructed. Too Busy Thinking About Comics is an exemplary example of what I mean by this, I would dread having my work torn apart by that guy, but would probably agree with everything he says. The guy who writes these FP reviews simply doesn't seem to have anything else to say other than I liked it, therefore it is good, or I didn't like it therefore it is shit.

I don't want this to sound like sour grapes for a bad review, indeed this review for me is better than I thought it would be; I can live with a 'meh' far more than I could if he got his claws out all over google. As I say, I'm basing this on his earlier reviews more than this one.

One review that sticks in my mind is the one for the first part of Rise of the Mekkosapiens. He said it reminded him of the Matrix. Really? Was that the best he could think of? There are robots and they have enslaved humanity, but apart from this widely used concept, the stories are entirely different, and the comment smacked of lazy writing. Rise of the Mekkosapiens is closer to Sonic the Hedgehog than the Matrix (I mean that in a good way Matt!)

In summary, there are problems intrinsic to the format which you either settle with and continue with, knowing that you can't please everyone, or you experiment until you find something that works better. But these past 3 issues have been slightly different to those before, so you are obviously open to change and improvement, and that is all good and we'll see where it goes from here. 

But when it comes to reviewing the story content rather than the way it is packaged, this guy has very little to say and says it with crude inelegance and complete disrespect for the idea that he could actually be using his writing to help make the world a better place by being at all insightful or constructive.